Abstract. Thischapterdiscussesthedesirablefeaturesoflanguagesandprotocolsforcommunicationamongintelligentinformationagents.Thesedesiderata aredividedintosevencategories:form,content,semantics,implementation,networking,environment,andreliability.TheKnowledgeQueryandManipulation LanguageKQMLisanewlanguageandprotocolforexchanginginformation andknowledge.Thisworkispartofalargere ort,theARPAKnowledgeSharingE ort,whichisaimedatdevelopingtechniquesandmethodologiesforbuildinglarge scaleknowledgebasesthataresharableandreusable.KQMLisbotha messageformatandamessage handlingprotocoltosupportrun timeknowledge sharingamongagents.KQMLisdescribedandevaluatedasanagentcommunicationlanguagerelativetothedesiderata. ToappearinIntelligentAgentsVolumeII Proceedingsofthe1995Workshopon AgentTheories,Architectures,andLanguages.M.Wooldridge,J.P.Mullerand M.Tambeeds.LectureNotesinArti cialIntelligence,Springer-Verlag,1996.
James Mayfield, Yannis Labrou, Timothy W. Finin